How safe the city?

I met a young woman walking her dog in Audubon Park this week, a native South Carolinian who said she gets the same response from everyone when she tells them she just moved to New Orleans: "You moved Uptown? Isn't it dangerous?"

Funny, but other than the traffic that courses down Magazine Street at a NASCAR pace, clipping the occasional rearview mirror along the way, I have never thought of my neighborhood as dangerous.

OK, my bicycle was stolen last week, but I don't classify that as danger.

If you're a regular reader of my column then you know that I have trouble keeping possession of bicycles for any meaningful period of time. It's not a commitment issue on my part. In fact, I can state unequivocally that I lose too many bicycles because our city has too many thieves in it, too many people who were raised wrong or not raised at all.

A friend of mine had the audacity to scold me about it -- "You mean it wasn't locked?" -- which strikes me as a variation on the oldno-wonder-you-got-raped-look-what-you're-wearing theme.

Blame the victim.

It was in my yard, dammit.

Anyway, I could write another column about the difficulties with bicycles in this town but what I really want to address is this notion that danger lurks in the streets Uptown -- or anywhere else, for that matter.

Walking around with my trick-or-treating kids the other night, the streets were lively with pedestrians and porch parties and I realized that just about everybody we ran into, we knew -- either from schools or sports or playgrounds or coffee shops or churches or just by walking down the streets or in the park because it's a real, living and thriving community with people who interact andsay hello and look out for each other although I wish somebody would look out more for my bicycles.

It all felt right that night, streets and sidewalks full of families and porch lights on and music and laughter coming out of windows and an abiding sense of community and safety.

But was it? Is it? Safe, I mean.

We had only one unpleasant encounter on our night's adventure, a man who belatedly and grumpily greeted my children's "Trick or treat!" at his door with a gruff retort of: "A little late to still be out, huh?"

It was 7:45.

That guy, I'll bet he thinks the neighborhood is dangerous.

But I don't. Because if I did, there would be only one reasonable action to take: to leave. Because raising children in a place I believe to be a threat to their safety is not in my philosophical wheelhouse.

(Funny: My wife and I were recently in Madison, Wis., a veritable Rockwellian community, and -- as we do everywhere we travel -- we played "Could you live here?" but the weird thing is, although there are profoundly few crimes of violence there, bicycle theft is ahuge problem because there are more bikes there than there are cars! That kind of got in my head. That, and the fact that it was snowing in October.)

Anyway, I raise all this because I think those in power around here -- whoever the hell that may be -- ought to think about this lifestyle conundrum when addressing the problems of, say, Faubourg Marigny and the French Quarter, both of which, a lot of folks will tell you, are not safe.

A friend of mine told me the other night he wants to get down and support the clubs on Frenchmen Street, the city's night-life jewel, but that he's not going to let squishy sentiment interfere with his belief that it is not currently secure.

"I'm not willing to take a bullet just to make a statement that I support New Orleans music," he said and, reading the headlines around here these days, it's hard to argue the point.

That so much of the violent crime is being perpetrated by juveniles only adds to the unease. Imagine a city where, instead of the sounds of laughter and "Trick or treat!," the only noises you hear from kids after dark are gunshots.

Is that where we are going or where we already are? If the "safe" areas of the city are under siege, how do we ever make the streets of Central City and the 9th Ward livable?

Does this town have to roll up and shut out the lights at 7:45 like my neighbor Mr. Grumpy to feel safe?

Can a few dozen teenagers with maximum firepower and minimum moral underpinnings undo a city's attempt to reinvent itself, to become better than it was? Safer than it was? When visitors to our city are greeted by a pool of blood at their feet on the sidewalk -- the detritus of another teenage gangsta spat spun out of control -- how does that affect this city's desperate invitation to Americans tocome back and do their business and pleasure in New Orleans?

From what I'm hearing, a lot of folks out there in the real world don't think it's safe here.